There was a newish player to the game already saying that there needs to be an increased role for it because: he has all the talismans and because of the forge he doesn't need to spend it on gear.

I do see his point as it doesnt take long for gold to just be a number on the screen. I know the only thing i spend it on is realm entry. There is epic gear, which is too cheap but too much for just a cosmetic look and yes you can turn gold in to crystals but then you can earn crystals from duels. So really gold is just nothing. And for newish players in the game to suss this out so quickly, tells me that this isnt ideal

Makes sense that in a dystopic multiverse of magical realms that a currency of magic is more meaningful than a currency of minerals. E.g., make Forge Crystals the basic currency. In so doing, convert all existing gold in to Forge Crystals. Voila.

gold could possibly just be left to the realm exploration. You could leave the fabric of the realm campaigns untouched, while leaving the crystals as the one currency that you actually spend on booster packs, epic gear and forge stuff.

Just have a conversion at the end of the realm that turns any leftover gold into crystals. Karma could be kept to allow players the ability to choose whether to cash them in for more crystals or exp level. (perhaps retheme exp to something like influence or what have you)

That said, i'm thinking that toning down duel mode rewards could work out.

Regarding the balance of rewards, in Duel mode in particular (crystals, forging etc).. Just to give an idea of how big the margin is between earning crystals (and gold) in Duel compared to earning it in other formats...

In the time it takes to earn around 1000 crystals via the 'non Duel path' you can earn around 4 times that by playing mostly Duels..

The non Duel method requires doing a lot of allying/invading and converting All of your winnings (gold and karma) into crystals to buy forges (around 20 forges)...

In the same amount of time, if you take the 'Duel path', you can earn thousands of crystals (approx 4000) and that's without exchanging any of your winnings (gold) for crystals, so you will still have thousands in gold (which you can exchange to receive yet more crystals)..

I'm not sure exactly how many forges that buys, 60+ maybe? way more if you convert all the gold to.

I understand the idea behind incentivising Duel by making the rewards higher but it's a rather heavy bias towards one format.